I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land so I don’t know which way to go. - Meg Jay

I wasn't scared of losing my past. i was scared of losing my future.

I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land on any side so I don’t know which way to go. I feel like I just have to keep hooking up and see what sticks. I didn’t know I’d be crying in the bathroom at work every day. The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow. My sister is thirty-five and single. I’m terrified that’s going to happen to me. I can’t wait to be liberated from my twenties. I’d better not still be doing this at thirty. Last night I prayed for just one thing in my life to be certain.

By thinking through his actual options, Ian stumbled onto a twentysomething version of what psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas calls the unthought known. Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives. Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part when, somewhere inside, I think he knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying uncertainty is wanting something but not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do. But it isn’t.